Grief and the Use of Photographs. The night after a devastating tornado ripped through an Ohio town killing more than twenty people and destroying nearly all its buildings and homes, the evening news showed the destruction and interviewed the victims.
One picture in particular seemed to sum up the tragedy and poignancy. There was a girl, perhaps ten, standing upon the rubble of what that morning had been her home. With a teddy bear in the crook of her arm, she picked her way through the pile of boards and plaster. Page by page she recovered pieces of the family photo album. This girl was doing what others had said they would do in a fire. Each time we look at the photographs of friends who have come to visit, relatives who have moved away or died, our memories grow larger. Often parents show their children relatives that they seldom see or may never have seen. Some people fear that being reminded of the past prevents a person from living in the present. How to Tell If Your Shrink Sucks (And Then Fire Them) Who Benefits From Public Complaints? Spirituality for Beginners 4: Who Am I? Think about when you first meet someone.
What do you want to know about them, and what do they want to know about you? The four dimensions we introduced in the previous post - - provide a good starting-point for separating and distinguishing one person from another, and therefore for getting to know somebody. In separating ourselves from everyone else, these are the categories we are most likely to use. Unless you are an identical twin, markers, your DNA molecules, are unique to you, as are the biological markers of your fingerprints.
Other markers (important because they are visually apparent and do not require laboratory testing) include gender , age, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour and type, also skin colour. Why People Are So Often the Opposite of What They Appear. An important method of transforming uncomfortable or unacceptable feelings into something more manageable is 'reaction formation', which is the superficial adoption and exaggeration of ideas and impulses that are diametrically opposed to one's own.
Smiling at Strangers. When I was a first-year medical student, my classmates and I used to go down to the hospital cafeteria between lectures to buy snacks.
The women from whom we bought them at the check-out counters were all young and sullen, rarely even glancing up at their customers as they rang up purchases. Their customers, in turn, seemed equally uninterested in them. So I decided one day I was going to get them to smile each time they rang up my purchases. To do this, I decided I'd simply start smiling at them myself. Are Emotions Prophetic? About Ritalin, Scare Tactics, and Medications for Kids with ADHD. The controversy over using Ritalin and other stimulants to treat ADHD surfaces repeatedly, often with emotional rhetoric which can lead those in need to avoid ever using such medications or allowing their children to, thereby giving up on a class of medications with enormous potential benefits. Examples of this genre of coverage include the Jan 28, 2012 article in the NYTimes " Ritalin Gone Wrong " (Alan Sroufe, PhD) and a response to that article in Psychology Today blogs, " Debunking Ritalin " (Jefferson Fish, Ph.D.)
What follows is an interview with Edward Hallowell, M.D., which offers a different perspective. Dr. Hallowell is a child and adult psychiatrist who has been treating ADHD for over 30 years, taught at Harvard Medical School for over 20, and who has both ADHD and dyslexia himself. Can you learn while you sleep? from Harvard Health Publications. Getting enough restful sleep restores the mind and body, preparing both for the challenges that lie ahead.
Without it, mood, concentration, and mental performance suffer. And according to research reported in the February 2012 Harvard Men’s Health Watch, sleep may actually improve cognitive function. These findings suggest that even a brief nap may help boost learning, memory, and creative problem solving. Sleep is divided into two major phases, rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non–rapid-eye-movement (NREM).
Sleep begins with the NREM state, which lasts about 60 to 90 minutes, before REM sleep kicks in. A 2010 Harvard study found that dreaming may reactivate and reorganize recently learned material, improving memory and boosting performance. Is Your Language Making You Broke and Fat? Keith Chen, an economist from Yale, makes a startling claim in an unpublished working paper: People's fiscal responsibility and healthy lifestyle choices depend in part on the grammar of their language.
Here's the idea: Languages differ in the devices they offer to speakers who want to talk about the future. For some, like Spanish and Greek, you have to tack on a verb ending that clearly marks future time—so, in Spanish, you would say escribo for the present tense ( I write or I'm writing ) and escribiré for the future tense ( I will write ).
How to Deal with a Difficult or Bullying Boss. We've all had bosses who are difficult to deal with.
Bosses who are inconsistent or unprofessional, bosses who put you in a no-win situation, backstabbing bosses, or bosses who are downright bullies. Here are four strategies to use to deal with your difficult boss. Hate Your Husband? (or Your Wife?) The ironic thing about this month of love is that the first six weeks or so of the New Year are the busiest time of the year for divorce lawyers (or so they say ).
Seems that many people are not feeling as much love and romance as Hallmark would hope. Many are actually feeling hate. The Malignant Divorce: Has NASA Gone Postal? Heaven has no rage like love betrayed.
We owe the term "going postal" to a series of killing sprees instigated by postal workers. It would seem that, sadly, a new term "going NASA" is in the works. On January 13th 2012, Shannon O'Roark Griffin become the second former NASA employee to commit a crime of vengeful rage. Why does Batman matter? It's now official. Batman is the greatest comic book superhero. Readers of Comic Heroes magazine voted Batman in gold medal position ahead of Spider-Man followed by Superman. This is great for Batman and the legions of fans around the globe. But why does Batman matter anyway? As readers of this blog will likely know, I wrote a book exploring the scientific possibility of Batman.
Real Women Take Center Stage as Hollywood Finally Gets It! Meryl Streep, at age 62, not only made it to the February cover of Vogue magazine, but soon after was celebrated at the Academy Awards for her starring role in the "Iron Lady. " It is a wonderful thing seeing her admired for her growing talent, beauty and grace. And she was not alone this year at the Oscars. Did anyone notice the other dozen or so middle aged nominees? The Beauty Factor: Men, Women and the Misperception of Sexual Interest. Whether you're married, single or somewhere in between, you've likely dealt with the ambiguous dance of romantic courtship at some point.
Even long-term couples who naively assumed ‘all that' would be over once they settled down have to mind their Ps and Qs lest they give the impression of being on the ‘married but looking' market. While courting rituals have changed over time, partners have long used ambiguous social signals. Ambiguity provides a buffer for the ‘signaler's' reputation as they try to gauge the recipient's sexual interest. It's widely known that men are more likely to jump to sexual conclusions than women; a theory of error management (EMT) suggests that this is because evolutionarily, missed opportunities were more costly than false alarms for men. Should We Care that More Women Are Having Children without Having Husbands? Yes, I know all about the latest angst about single mothers, set off a few weeks ago by the article in the , " For women under 30, most births occur outside marriage .
" I wasn't going to go there. I have written about single parenting over and over again . In some ways, the myth that the children of single parents are doomed is one of the most exasperating to try to challenge. How Emotionally Attached Are You to Your Pet? No relationship that humans have is quite like the attachment we form to non-humans. LSD helps to treat alcoholism. DEA/Science Faction/Corbis An analysis of old studies suggests LSD may have a role to play in treating alcoholism. The powerful hallucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) has potential as a treatment for alcoholism, according to a retrospective analysis of studies published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Not Being a Troll Isn't Enough: A Handbook to Being a Model Internet Citizen. Remember: Behind Every Keyboard Is a Person, a Lot Like You Be Aware of and Active On Issues that Pertain to the Internet.
When I threw my boyfriend in front of a car. Mindus Interruptus: Distractions are Costlier than You Think! Let's face it. We hardly ever have the luxury of focusing on one thing anymore. The thrill of blaming others. Addiction and Afghanistan, Volkow and Obama. No, this isn't about the poppies they grow in Afghanistan that reach the streets of America as heroin. Let's start with the current Afghanistan mess where, after ten years in the country, fighting the Taliban and training Afghani soldiers and police, the accidental burning of Korans by American soldiers has led to massive bloodletting and assassinations, often by the very security forces we have trained wrought on the Americans who have trained them . Despite an American-led training effort that has spanned years and cost tens of billions of dollars, the Afghan security forces are still widely seen as riddled with dangerously unreliable soldiers and police officers. The distrust has only deepened as a pattern of attacks by Afghan security forces on American and NATO service members, beginning years ago, has drastically worsened over the past few days.
The typical American reaction is: "Those ingrate, crazy Afghans—turning against us after all we've done for them. " "Lady, Your Dog Is Fat!" For most of his life, my Vizsla Ody had a perfect canine figure: he was pure muscle with not an ounce of fat. But as Ody grew old, his waistline gradually started to fade, and by around age 12 he had begun to resemble a large red sausage. When our vet announced to me that Ody was fat and needed to lose weight, I felt shock, denial, and then deep embarrassment . The "Career Woman" Myth. When a woman is over age 30, single and childless, people want to know why.
Not just her doting parents , grandparents, aunts and uncles. The You Behind Your Resume. Adultolescence: It's the Beginning of a New Age. Psychoticperc. Psychology & Philosophy. The "Career Woman" Myth.